^/l 









^ r\ 



■■•^ -l^- 






£.- tj>i* 




Class £^_2- 
>6 / 

1)0( )!{._' 



>~iA^^^l^i 57?^ 








Speech of Hon. Luke Ef Wright, r.ecretary of War, 
Delivered at the centennial celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birth, 
February 12, 1909, near Hodgenville, Ky. 



We are assembled to-day upon the spot where Abraham Lincoln was bom, 
to celebrate the hundredth anniversaiTr of his birth. When we look about 
us and behold a great and prosperous State teeming vith population and all 
the evidences of a highly developed and complex civilixation, it requires 
an effort of the memory to recsdl how crude and primitive were his surround- 
ings. when his eyes first saw the light and during his boyhood. 

He was bom of humble peirontage in a rude cabin of logs. His entry 
into the world was accompanied by no Miens, and no aeer prognosticated his 
future fame. Appsu'ently his only heritage was to be a life of ignorance 
and poverty. • ■, 

Still, it would be misleading to infer that the future could hold no 
prize for him. The hardy advanturers who swarmed out from the older 
colonies and crossed the Alleghenies, were the off -shoot of that older 



Qdr . 



VlJ<tC/Li<IAfn 



stock of English, Scotch and Irish which had crossed the seas and had 



fotmded the first colonies upon Anerican soil. They were a simple, 



Ood-fearing people who lived their lives in field «md forest, uncorrupted 



by wealth, strengthened in body and mind by hardships and dangers endured 



and overcome, with imaginations quickened by the thought that a continent 



was theirs. Ihilst there were instances smong them of men of gentle 



birth emd comparative fortune, yet all stood upon terms of perfect equality, 



and opportunity for all was practically the same. Any substantial dis- 



tinction between the greatest and the humblest man, under such circumstances. 



could only be one created by individual prowess or worth. 



There is perhe^JS in all the world no fairer land, no territory com- 



bining more natural advantages, and none more favorable to the development 
of a virile race, than that vast area which gradually falls away from the 



western aide of the Allegheny mountains. 



It is a curious fact that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were 



bom in the same State, that their parents were almost neighbors, and 



!^i 



equally ourious that in after life In a great olvil war they Bhould have 
been leaders on opposite aides. They began under the ssffle environment, 
and yet how widely separated were they in their subsequent lives and 
fortunes 1 In the Two -Ocean Pass in the Yellowstone Park is found a 
level spot henB&ed in by surrounding hills into ^ich flov/s a stream which 
there divides, one part flowing into the Pacific and the other into the 
Atlantic; and this stream is typical of the carters of the two men. 
Davis in early manhood found himself living in a community in which elaverj' 
was a recognized institution, and himself became a slave-holder as were 
his neighbors «uid friends; whilst Lincoln found himself in a free-soil 
State where slavery was regarded a crime. 

From the foundation of the Federal Government the right of a State 
to withdraw from the Federal compact was more or less discussed. It is 
not too much to say that the founders purposely pretermitted any explicit 
declaration on the subject, and thereafter it was regarded as an open 
question as to which intelligent and patriotic men might and did differ. 
This difference was for many years not sectional, but gradually became so 



after slavery became distinctly a Southern institution and the agitation 
in favor of its limitation or abolition became a burning issue. 

Yet it would be unfair to say that there was a con^dete unanimity of 
sentiment upon this subject on either side of Vason and Dixon's line. 
In the border States of the South especially, the majority of the people 
were opposed to the dogma of secession, as was demonstrated by the over- 
whelming majority against the ordinances of secession submitted to the 
people in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee a few months 
before the outbreak of hostilities. Moreover, in these same border States 
it was generally conceded that slavery iras morsdly indefensible and that 
some ipeans should be adopted looking to gradual criancipation. But the 
practical difficulty confronting those thus thinking was, what would be the 
status of the slave when freed, coupled with the feeling that to make him a 
free man dependent upon his own resources would, in a vast majority of 
instances, be inhumane and decree his ultimate extinction. Even in the 
North there was a large element of intelligent and conservative men who 
deprecated the agitation against slavery and had not brought themselves to 



ooneent to the thought of coercion in the event of eeceseion. But the 
continued propefganda preached against slavery and the extreme utterances 
of partisans on either side unquestionably by degreea had the effect of 
drawing a clear line of dcmarkation between the North and the South, both 
as to slavery and secession. 

I do not refer to this ancient history for the purpose of reviving 
discussions long since dead and buried, but merely to call attention to 
facts which have perhaps been obscured by the oven^elming events which 
followed. It can only be a matter of surmise and profitless speculation 
as to what would have happened had the Southern people been loft to deal 
with this perplexing question in their own way. Perhaps slavery was 
too strongly rooted to be eradicated save by fii^ and sword, and it may be 
that in the mysterious movings of a Divine Providence the sins of the 
fathers were visited upon the children and that the South p«dd the penalty 
for the violation of a great moral law. But it ought to be rwnembered, 
and I believe is now being remembered more and more, that it was not alone 
the sin of the South, although its expiation fell heaviest upon her people. 



In reading the public utterancea of Ifr. Lincoln during thia period of 
bitter discuusion, nothing has iopresaod me more than the singular clearness 
of his perception that the responsibility for slavex'y rested upon 8lL1 our 
people emd was a burden which should be borne by eill alike. Thero was a 
temperance of statement, a respect for the opposite point of view, and a 
Boderation in his positions, «^ich, when the excitement of the time ia 
considered, ia most extraordinary' and must command our admiration. Veil 
would it have been for 6l11 otW people had thoy been able to approach thia 
burning question with the same conservatism and good sense. I have some- 
times thought that this was to some extent due to the fact that hia birth 
and early youth were in a slave-holding State, and that he understood th© 
attitude and feeling of its people to a degree not possible for one bom 
and roared in a community where alaverj' had long been unknown. He sincerely 
believed in an indissoluble Union. He sincerely believed that slavery was 
a curse and a gz>eat moral wrong; and in believing thus he was right. He 
was opposed not only to its extension but believed that gradual emancipation 

was a possibility worth striving for; and yet ho respected the Constitution 



7 

and did not believe in the right to extinguish slavery by force. In all 
the apeeches he mado thoro can be found no word of ill vail or malice towards 
the Southern people, sund in reading his utterances no Southern man finds 
himself entertaining tlie slightest sentiment of resentment towards him or 
aught B&vo adsiiration for his sincerity, friendliness and broad huiaanity. 

His first inaugural address, delivered at a time when passion was at 
its height and Civil War was imminent, is pathetic in its appeals for peace 
and union. His great heairt seemed rent in twain when ho finished by saying— 

"I am loath to close. Is are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must 
not break our bonds of affection. The cr/stic chords of memory, 
stretching from even' battlefield and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, 
by the better angels of our nature." 

Alas that the still, small voice of moderation emd reason was drowned 
in the angry cries of determined men marshalling for a conflict, the magni- 
tude of which few if any appreciated, and the consequenoes of which few 



if any foresaw. And yet there were aunong the oombatants tens of thouaanda 
of men who folt the sweot reasonableness of his dispassionate statementa, 
whose hearts were touched by his pathetic cry for peace, and yet who, caught 
up in the rising oxoittaaent of the time, aligned themselves under the streaa 
of circuinstancoa on the one side or the other; — tens of thousands ol men 
on both sides deploring war, yot when war seemed inevitable, ranging them- 
selvis "dth their neir^hbors. It seemed the very irony of fate that so 
gentle a spirit, so siiapathetic and kindly a nature, should be forced by 
the stem logic of events over which he had no control and for which he was 
in no yay responsible, to assume the role of Cornoanaer-in-Chief in a 
sanguinary Civil War between laen of the oaise blood and the saute traditions. 

The years of war and destruction during which he was President, whilst 
they plowed deep lines of care and grief upon liia h^wiy face and wrung his ^ 
gentle heart, provoked no expressions of bitterness from hio lips. His 
many acts of personal kindnosa to ftou-'.hem prisoners and Southern SvTapatliiaters 
demonstrated ho^r free from the spirit of malice or vengeance ho was. As in 
the progress of tirae it bocarao evident the Union anas would triunph, he 



evinced no feeling of exultation or sense of personal triumph, but only an 
anxioua deaire to restore the Southern States to thoir forcer pT.ac© in the 
Union, and to heal the wounds of civil otrife. He was opposed to extreme 
Ofeaeurea against the Southern people, and was prepared to stand between them 
and the radicals of his party v/ho clanorcd for excicplan' reprisals upon a 
conquered people when the fortunes of war had delivered into their hands. 
That ho would have succeeded in carrying with him the great majority of the 
people of the North in his beneficent purposce, does not to ny oind adnit 
of doubt; and that there vould have followed sperdily a Union of hearts, 
is equally certain. It -yas indeed cruel that at the moment when he had 
reached the point for which he had striven, he should have died at the hand* 
of a hair-brained xSSSt actor vrho was in no way identified with the South 



or her people. Still more cruel \ras fate to th« Southern people. They 
shuddered both at the dastardly act of his assassination and at the disastrous 
consequences to themselves as larell which they knew would follow. The 
dies irae of reconetruction was the inevitable result, and reconstruction 
did more to postpone reconciliation than did war itself. It was direful 



10 

in its results to both sections, ajnd to the negroes in greater measure if 
possible than to the whites. 

But time has brought healing on its wings. A new generation of men 
has been bom since Lincoln died. The animosities of the old days are 
ended. As we look back across the dead years we see his homely figure 
standing out clear and large. He is not awesome^r repellant. There is 
an expression of pathos, touched with humor, upon his face which draws us 
strongly, and there is sunshine all about hia. He seems to speak and 
we again to hear him say: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not 
be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds 
of affection." And thus hearing, the men of the South can not only look 
back upon a lost cause without bitterness, but recognize it was best that 
it did fail. And they can and do without bitterness and in all sincerity, 
join with all the people of this Nation and all the people of all Nations 
in paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln - the liberator - the pacificator - 
the gr&at American. 



^.■^: 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



I! I Mill 



11 ii 111 linn :. J«i 

012 025 143 



:-^^ 



f' < 






V f*^ 






